The Frequency of Rapid Rotation Among K Giant Stars

TL;DR

This study identifies and characterizes rapidly rotating K giant stars using a novel cross-correlation method, discovering 29 such stars in a large, metal-poor sample, and suggests possible binary origins for rapid rotation.

Contribution

Developed a new cross-correlation technique to measure rotational velocities in low S/N spectra, enabling the detection of rapid rotators in a faint, metal-poor K giant sample.

Findings

Discovered 28 new rapid rotators and one extreme case with vsini of 86.4 km/s.

Rapid rotators constitute about 2.2% of the sample, consistent with other surveys.

Rapid rotators tend to be more metal-poor and possibly tidally-locked binaries.

Abstract

We present the results of a search for unusually rapidly rotating giant stars in a large sample of K giants (~1300 stars) that had been spectroscopically monitored as potential targets for the Space Interferometry Mission's Astrometric Grid. The stars in this catalog are much fainter and typically more metal-poor than those of other catalogs of red giant star rotational velocities, but the spectra generally only have signal-to-noise (S/N) of ~20-60, making the measurement of the widths of individual lines difficult. To compensate for this, we have developed a cross-correlation method to derive rotational velocities in moderate S/N echelle spectra to efficiently probe this sample for rapid rotator candidates. We have discovered 28 new red giant rapid rotators as well as one extreme rapid rotator with a vsini of 86.4 km/s. Rapid rotators comprise 2.2% of our sample, which is consistent with other surveys of brighter, more metal-rich K giant stars. Although we find that the temperature distribution of rapid rotators is similar to that of the slow rotators, this may not be the case with the distributions of surface gravity and metallicity. The rapid rotators show a slight overabundance of low gravity stars and as a group are significantly more metal-poor than the slow rotators, which may indicate that the rotators are tidally-locked binaries.